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conner_bw (120497) writes "Is there an acceptable compromise to behaviour targeting? On the one hand, I don't want to be profiled by unscrupulous advertisers. On the other hand, I feel that the advertiser is the middleman between the things I care about (content) and the dollars that support those things. My compromise is to take a page out of BF Skinner's book Walden Two and view the situation as a sort of absurd behaviourist experiment. Basically, I adblock everything but whitelist the sites I support. Is this too much? Not enough? What should the individual do protect themselves, if anything at all?"

Part of the problem is that the industry is still in it's childhood. Give it another 10 years and maybe we will slowly develop standards that you can reliably use to tell the difference between good actors and bad actors.

There are certain activities that we already know are evil, but legitimate corporations still do. For example, the "Are you sure you want to close this website window?" is particularly evil, but some people still do it.

While there will always be a fair amount of unwarranted intrusion from the companies that help pay for the content we want to view (Ginsu knives commercial loud enough to hear from the porcelin oval office), the simple fact is that much of YOUR internet must now figure out how to pay for itself before it's IPO lands square on its' face book.

1. Block Flash. No advertiser needs to run a program on my computer.2. Allow all other graphical and text ads.3. If it moves, block the ad system that served it.

I think that provides a reasonable compromise: I continue to be exposed to inoffensive ads and occasionally buy from them. The other advertisers can place ads which conform to what I'm willing to view or not as they choose. If they choose to place motion ads with services that accept motion ads, I won't see them.

I've come to think of advertising as a drunken loudmouth party crasher. Each time he shows up at the door he promises he'll behave and remain tasteful and unobtrusive. But after a few minutes inside, advertising starts talking louder and longer; he simply can't control himself. When advertising sees that people are trying to ignore him, he responds by ever more forcibly interrupting conversations with yet another shouted, pointless story about himself. Not satisfied with having merely degraded the conve